The lining of maps: mapping the intimacies of the cartographic processes

Each mapping process is affected by the personal lives of the cartographer(s). In this paper we propose to focus on this particular aspect of mapmaking: How do the intimate and emotional aspects of the map's creation impact the decision process and by extension the cartographic outcome? This intimate aspect of mapmaking can become eminently political when the mapmakers uncover the traumatic experiences they face because of their racial, class, gendered or intersectional identities. This paper proposes to investigate the potential of sensibility mapping to represent such dimensions of mapping processes. Sensibility mapping can be defined as a reflexive research-creation approach. It emerged a few decades ago from artistic, feminist, activist and participatory urbanism cartographies. In recent years, this specific mode of representation has been mobilized in a research project to address the mapping complexity related to traumatic genocide stories: the life stories of Rwandan exiles who have lived in Montreal since the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. Overall, this research underpins sensibility mapping to challenge cartographic norms from an epistemological point of view, in order to enrich the knowledge about how we make maps.